This study identifies four patterns of how college presidents (N=32) interpret their own leadership roles and defines them in terms of a president's target of attention, mode of action, and relatedness to college life. It concludes that the presidency is not a singular, objective event but a subjective construction that may be experienced in…

Three essays and a resource guide are offered to assist new college and university presidents in contemplating their tasks, both the "big picture" and "daily detail." Estala Mara Bensimon's essay, titled "Five Approaches to Think About: Lessons Learned from Experienced Presidents," presents five recommendations, including making campus visits…

The extent to which college presidents incorporate single or multiple vantage points in evaluating good leadership was studied, based on Bolman and Deal's framework as adapted by Birnbaum. They suggest that leaders implicitly use different cognitive "frames" to define their role and understand organizational behavior. A frame helps the…

The activities and behavioral patterns associated with the first stage of "taking charge" by a new college president are examined, based on a sample of 14 new presidents: four from major research universities, four from community colleges, three from public four-year colleges, and three from private colleges. The presidents had been in…

The digest is based on a full length report (with the same title) on leadership in higher education. The full report provides a definitive review of the literature and institutional practice on the topic. Recent scholars have new ideas challenging traditional notions that organizations are driven by leadership or that the quality of leadership…

Interviews with 15 presidents of diverse colleges and universities investigated the ways in which the administrators perceived their administrative teams as useful. The presidents had very different approaches to teamwork, using them for utilitarian, expressive, and cognitive functions ("real" teams) or in more limited ways ("illusory" teams).…

Four case studies show that a college president's image is constructed largely from actions and behaviors indicating to the faculty that presidents are, or are not, taking an appropriate role. The study explored ways in which faculty's interpretation of a president's actions affects faculty behaviors and perceptions of institutional functioning.…

Administrators use different organizational perspectives, or "frames," to help them understand situations, problems, and day-to-day activities. In higher education, four frames are identified as bureaucratic, collegial, political, and symbolic. Frames used by 32 college presidents are analyzed according to content, complexity,…

An integration and synthesis of the theoretical literature on leadership with the literature concerning higher education as a social institution is presented. The literature on a conceptual explanation of leadership is reviewed and related directly to higher education and its sociological and organizational uniqueness. The first four of the…

A study created and compared two composite college presidential leadership styles, based on analysis of the effects of new presidents. The impact of one type's leadership was primarily on satisfaction and morale, the other's on structural and physical features of the institution. Results suggest new presidents should integrate the two approaches.…